Slacktavism

Recently within the media their has been increased criticism in a new form of social media activism which has been coined “Slacktivism”. Unlike previous forms of political dissent, internet activism requires basic participation, with no cost or perceived expense to the individual.

On October 2010 Malcolm Gladwell wrote a piece in the New Yorker criticizing those who chose to draw comparisons between traditional activism and social media “revolutions”. He uses the example of the Greensboro sitin’s to illustrate that this form of high-risk activism which threatens the safety of individuals and entire communties cannot be compared to online participation.

As the historian Robert Darnton has written, “The marvels of communication technology in the present have produced a false consciousness about the past—even a sense that communication has no history, or had nothing of importance to consider before the days of television and the Internet.” But there is something else at work here, in the outsized enthusiasm for social media. Fifty years after one of the most extraordinary episodes of social upheaval in American history, we seem to have forgotten what activism is.”  (Gladwell 2010)

He claims that social media revolutions have weak ties and that this like and share form of activism is destroying real forms of social action. “The things that King needed in Birmingham – discipline and strategy – were things that online social media cannot provide.”(Gladwell 2010). According to Gladwell social networks are not hierarchical and that famous protests such as those in the civil rights movement cannot be organised over social media platforms.

Doubtless Gladwell is a talented writer, anyone who has had the privilege or reading his work is aware of this. However there are loud and persuasive voices who are critical against the idea that this form of social revolution lacks the motivation needed for effective change. Maria Popova in her article “Malcolm Gladwell is #wrong” states that its impossible for a person who does not use social media to weigh in on its value. “Malcolm Gladwell’s take on social media is like a nun’s likely review of the Kama Sutra — self-righteous and misguided by virtue of voluntary self-exclusion from the subject.”

In a landscape riddled with pessimists it is refreshing to find a voice amongst the masses willing to standup to the widespread criticism of clicktivism.

References

Popova, M. (2010) ‘Malcolm Gladwell Is #Wrong’ Change Observer, 10 June. http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/feature/malcolm-gladwell-is-wrong/19008/

Morozov, E. (2011) ‘ Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go’ The Guardian, 7 March. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/07/facebook-twitter-revolutionaries-cyber-utopians

Bohdanova, T. (2013) ‘How Internet Tools Turned Ukraine’s #Euromaidan Protests Into a Movement’, Global Voices, 9 December, http://globalvoicesonline.org/2013/12/09/how-internet-tools-turned-euromaidan-protests-into-a-movement/